The way stories end
by BlackEyedGirl
Summary: This is nothing like the stories. SPOILERS for 2.13. RobinMarian, RobinMuch


**Title:** The way stories end  
**Fandom:** Robin Hood BBC  
**Pairings:** Much/Robin, Robin/Marian (other background het and slash)  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Length:** 1,000 words  
**Disclaimer:** All belongs to the BBC.  
**Warnings:** **SPOILERS for 2.13**. Character death. Some angst.  
**Summary:** This is nothing like the stories.

* * *

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. In the stories, the hero gets the girl, and they live happily ever after. In the stories, Marian becomes the Lady of Locksley Manor, and though she still dies in her husband's arms, she is buried in English soil, and their children tend the grave.

This is nothing like the stories – he and Robin, cloistered together in Robin's childhood home. Much touches the bottle to Robin's lips. "Robin."

Robin's laughter is breathy. "It's all right, Much."

"No," Much insists, "No, it is not all right!"

A fever, and witch-doctory, nothing like Djaq's careful science. This cannot be how his master dies.

Much has called them. Will and Djaq are speeding back from the Holy Land, but they will not return before it is too late for even her help. He has called John away from his son, and the peculiar concord he has with Alice. And Allan from Scarborough, where he has been ever since he went to explain to Luke about brothers who love us but leave nonetheless.

None of them will reach Nottingham before the end.

Robin is supposed to die in battle, in service to his king, hours or days after his wife. But the king had returned to England only long enough to stop his brother, and pardon Robin, before leaving again for war. He had remembered about Bonchurch, or Robin had, but that had stopped being an option the day Marian died.

When the King returned to war, with the country still broken, Robin had disappeared for weeks. Much had gone to Locksley, and looked after Robin's people. Robin had returned, thinner and wounded, but finally grieving, and Much hadn't spoken a word of reproach.

"Robin," he says again. He sits on the edge of Robin's bed, patting his forehead futilely with the damp cloth.

"What's wrong?" Robin asks, and it is such a ridiculous question that even Much laughs this time.

"What's _wrong_?" Much echoes. "You are dying, that is what's wrong. You are dying, and you will not even make the slightest effort to…"

"_Not _die?"

"Exactly!"

"I can't, my friend, I can't. I'm not as strong as you, remember?"

It has been a long time since Robin first said that, though he had said it often since, always in apology. There has been less cause for apology in recent years. They fitted together easily – Marian had been the only one who could have fixed Robin, and as two broken men, they do as well as can be expected. Sometimes there are women, when one of them is worse for alcohol, and it has been long enough in forgetting that remembering is a blow. But mostly it is only them, in a bed that seems too large, clinging to each other.

He is tempted to lie down alongside Robin, and fall into the sleep that is calling his master home. But that would be too easy, and it has been so long since they took the easy path.

"Master?" he asks.

"Robin," he corrects, and then says, "Yes?"

"It hasn't been all… we were happy, sometimes, weren't we?"

"Much…" Robin says, that way he has of saying Much's name that no one else has ever managed. He takes Much's hand. "We were happy, you and I. No one else would have done so well, after." He grins. "No one else would have tried. I think… I was rather hard to live with, sometimes, wasn't I?"

"No more than I'd expected," Much says, though nothing about this had been what he had expected.

"Oh," Robin says. "Good."

"Good."

"Much. You know I can't wait for Djaq."

"Yes. Yes, I know."

"How long…"

"Forever, Robin, wait forever."

But Much can count on one hand the number of times Robin has bent his will to another's, and his breathing turns laboured even at the suggestion.

"A little while," he amends, "just a little while longer. Please."

"All right, my friend, as you wish."

Robin does not ask him to make it easier – he knows that there are things Much cannot do, even for love. He drifts in and out of consciousness, talking to people who aren't there.

"Soon, master, soon."

It is sooner than he would have liked, but he cannot resent the breath leaving over Robin's lips, or the name that he hears in it. Much closes Robin's eyes, and straightens the bedclothes. He goes downstairs, and tells them to start ringing the bells.

When he tells the story, which he does often, it is nothing and everything like the truth. He doesn't write it down, or ask Djaq to help him, when she arrives, as beautiful and sad as she had ever been. Will still looks too young, but less so, with one arm around his wife and one around his daughter. John is starting to show his age, but he is happy as he had never truly been before. And Allan looks as he did when Much left him, like a man with half his heart torn out, like Robin. When Much tells the story, he tells it as they do that day, with heroism and warmth, the good days in the middle of the nightmare. And he tells it as they don't: with a happy ending.

The stories that come back to him, after many retellings and much travel, bear little relation to the one he told at the beginning. Robin is alternately more or less than he was to Much – a bloodthirsty madman or the saviour of them all. The gang appears in almost all the incarnations, though their numbers vary. Even Much is there now and again, though he no longer recognises himself. But Marian and Robin are a constant, the true heart of the tale. They live and die together, in the England their other selves had given everything for.

Djaq asks him, voice all gentle concern, "And you, Much, where are you in the story?"

He doesn't understand, and tilts his head to look at her. "I'm the one who tells it."

* * *

FIN. Reviews are always nice. 


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